(Balkans: A Mirror of the New World Order, Istanbul: EREN, 1995;
pp. 121-132)

More than seventy years ago the British scholar R. W. Seton-Watson
published a work entitled The Rise of Nationality in the Balkans(1).
Since then, nationality and its associated problems have remained at the
heart of the politics, both domestic and foreign, of the peoples and states
of the Balkan peninsula. Nationality has proved a persistent force, but
not an immutable one. The perceptions, aspirations and expectations which
define such notions as "Greek", "Bulgarian" or "Serb" have changed over
time. They have been revised from above, by a succession of political regimes:
monarchical, parliamentary, military, communist and post-communist. They
have been more subtly affected by social and cultural changes, including
the advent of mass literacy and mass communications. Above all, they have
been altered by the great political upheavals which the Balkan peninsula
has undergone in the course of the twentieth century: the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913, the First and Second World Wars, and the post-1989 collapse
of communism.

A striking instance of the mutability of nationality is furnished by
that group of South Slavs who today call themselves Macedonians. Not only
does their nationality continue to be disputed by several of their neighbours,
but they themselves have accomplished the feat, unique in the modern Balkans,
of assuming one national identity, and then discarding it in favour of
another. The Macedonians are an extreme case, but it will be suggested
here that the forces which have governed the peculiar evolution of their
sense of nationality are not, at bottom, different from those which have
shaped the nationalities of other Balkan peoples. Before proceeding to
a detailed examination of the Macedonian case, therefore, it is appropriate
to make certain general observations on the subject of nationality in the
modern Balkans.

I

The first general observation to be made is that the Balkan peninsula is
peopled by small nations. Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians,
Romanians, and Croats are numerically few in comparison to the Russians
and Ukrainians who inhabit the territories to their north, with the Germans
and Italians who dwell to their west, and with the Turks who live to their
east.(2) The small size
of each of the Balkan peoples has rendered them both individually and collectively
vulnerable to domination by extra-Balkan powers. Reference may be made
not only to the four or five centuries of Ottoman rule, but also to the
experience of German and Italian occupation during the Second World War,
and to what, for certain Balkan peoples, was arguably a form of Russian
domination between 1944 and 1989. Within the modern era, too, the Balkan
peoples have also felt themselves to be vulnerable to domination by each
other. For many non-Serbs, including many Macedonians, both the first and
second Yugoslavias were thinly-disguised vehicles for Serbian domination.
It should, however, be added that the problem is not exclusively Serb:
at different times in the modern era, the Greeks and the Bulgarians have
also been seen as potential dominators of their Balkan neighbours.

This chronic sense of vulnerability, both to immediate neighbours and
to extra-Balkan powers, has had important repercussions on the foreign
policies of Balkan states. On the one hand, Balkan states and peoples have,
at various times, sought to free themselves from domination by extra-Balkan
great powers, and to assert their independence or "non-alignment". On the
other hand, at other times, Balkan states and peoples have sought actively
to involve extra-Balkan powers in their affairs, seeing in them strong
patrons who might protect and advance their interests against those of
their neighbours.

There is, however, more to the smallness of the nations of the Balkan
peninsula than the objective facts of population size, and the implications
of those facts for international power politics. Equally important are
certain cultural and attitudinal characteristics of the small nations of
the Balkan peninsula. The first of these characteristics, particularly
marked in the case of the Macedonian Slavs, is a sense of vulnerability
to cultural assimilation. This sense of vulnerability is grounded in historical
experience: cultural and linguistic assimilation has played a large part
in the "nation-building process" in the nineteenth and twentieth century
Balkans. It is well established that the modern Greek nation was built
up in significant part through the assimilation, or "Hellenisation", of
originally non-Greek speaking elements, including Albanians, Vlachs, Slavs,
and even Turkish-speakers of the Orthodox Christian faith. From the early
nineteenth century onwards, the Greeks were pioneers in the use of schooling
and educational propaganda as a device for assimilating non-Greeks, including
not a few Macedonian Slavs.(3)
In similar fashion, it has been suggested by competent scholars that at
the time of the founding of the Bulgarian state in 1878, less than 50%
of the new state's population may have been Bulgarian. Within a few decades
this percentage rose to form an unchallengeable majority, partly, at least,
through the assimilation of non-Bulgarian elements in the population.(4)

These assimilatory processes were facilitated by certain objective features
of Ottoman and early post-Ottoman Balkan society. The population, whether
Moslem or Orthodox Christian, was massively illiterate, living for the
most part in scattered rural communities, and speaking dialects rather
than "languages". Until the early nineteenth century, there were to most
intents and purposes only two written languages in the region: Turkish,
the language of literate Moslems; and Greek, the language of literate Orthodox
Christians. Even in the "prenational" era, education, and its concomitant,
social advancement, implied a degree of cultural and linguistic assimilation,
at least for those whose mother-tongue was neither Turkish nor Greek. Finally,
though statistics of any kind are lacking, there are grounds for suspecting
a significant incidence of bi-or even tri-lingualism in the late Ottoman
Balkans, particularly in urban centres in lingustically-mixed regions,
of which Macedonia was a prime example.

It should be emphasized that the type of assimilation under discussion
was voluntary: nobody was beaten up. Rather, once a particular linguistic
and "ethnic" group achieved a position of social and political dominance,
so members of other groups proved willing to assimilate to its language
and culture. Of course, there have been certain clear barriers to assimilation.
Religion remains one of the most important, as evidenced by the Slav-speaking
but Moslem Pomaks and Torbesh, and by all three religious-national communities
in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Nor is it at all easy to assimilate a population
once it has been raised lo the level of independent national consciousness
through literacy, education, and the acquisition of its own social and
cultural leaders; the Macedonians in the first Yugoslavia are a case in
point. But the continued existence of non-coercive assimilatory pressures
should not be overlooked. As recently as the 1970s, for example, it was
possible to hear intellectuals in Skopje speculate that the long-term fate
of the Macedonians of Yugoslavia would be Serbianisation. It was not that
such pessimists believed in "dark plots" hatched in Belgrade, but that
they feared that the pressure of the general Yugoslav popular culture,
which was largely Serbo-Croatian speaking, would ultimately erode the cultural
and linguistic particularity of the Macedonians.

One further aspect of the "small nation syndrome" may be termed "cultural
provincialism", by which is meant simply the observable fact that the various
national cultures of the modern Balkans, with their distinctive institutions,
habits and ways of life, are not regarded by their participants as being
for export. This is in marked contrast to the modern cultures of Western
Europe, Russia and America, and also in contrast to the dominant pre-national
cultures of the Balkans, the Ottoman Moslem and the Byzantine Orthodox,
both of which were regarded by their adherents as being, in principle,
exportable to those who would accept them. Throughout the modern era, the
nations of the Balkans have been major cultural importers, from Western
and Central Europe, and also from Russia in its Tsarist and Soviet forms.
In culture, as in politics, the modern Balkan states' insistence upon "national"
independence and particularity has gone hand in hand with a marked reliance
upon external patrons and partners.

A second general observation concerns "national identity." In the modern
Balkans, as elsewhere, group identity has proved to be more complex than
appears from standard nationalist accounts of the subject. One plausible
view of the development of national identity in the Balkans since the early
nineteenth century would point to the progressive dissolution of larger
religious identities (Orthodox, Moslem) into smaller linguistic "national"
units (Greek, Serb, Bulgarian, Romanian and Macedonian in the case of the
Orthodox; Bosnian, Albanian, and Turkish in the case of the Moslems). An
equally plausible view, placing its emphasis upon the processes of assimilation
alluded to above, would point to the progressive absorption of smaller,
local identities into the larger linguistic nation. What is misleading
about such views, however, is that they imply that an older set of identities
has been entirely displaced by identities which are essentially new, or
at least, "revived". For one thing, most, if not all, of the modern national
identities were at least prefigured in the "pre-national" era: terms like
"Albanian", "Serb" and "Bulgarian" were used, and in senses which were
not fundamentally different from those in which they are used today. "Macedonian"
is perhaps the most important exception. For another, "pre-national" identities
have persisted: the old Moslem and Orthodox religious solidarities have
not lost all appeal, and nor have some of the local, "particularist" identities,
one notable example being "Montenegrin." Finally, it is worth noting that
the modern, "national" era lias also brought with it new identities which
transcend the boundaries of the nation-state as conventionally understood,
among them being "Slav", "Yugoslav" and "European". In sum, in the modern
Balkans, as elsewhere, group identities are comprised of an amalgam of
allegiances, and the emergence of national identities in their modern form
is best understood not as a process of displacement, creation or rebirth,
but as a process of reconstruction and reinterpretation, in which old and
new allegiances combined and were partially redefined. This process was
not of necessity definitive: there remained the possibility of further
change, particularly under the pressure of compelling events.

This leads to the third general observation, which concerns history,
and how history is perceived. The teaching of history has played a positive
role in the development of modern national consciousness in the Balkans.
History, in those countries, is a highly politicised subject of study.
It is not simply that history i.s used to foster a sense of past achievement,
and to legitimise the present: it also arouses expectations for the future,
and not only territorial expectations. Balkan history-writing, whether
of the nationalist or Marxist schools (the two are not mutually exclusive),
treats modern Balkan history as rational: as the unfolding of logical processes
of clear tendency and direction. For the nationalist school, Ihe focus
is on the "re-birth", affirmation, consolidation and self-assertion of
the "nation". For the Marxist school, the focus is on the unfolding of
the iron laws of social development, and the successive transitions from
feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to socialism. "History has
a trend."(5)

There is an alternative view of modern Balkan history: namely, that
far from having a clear trend, it has been catastrophic. In the present
context, the use of the term "catastrophic" implies no value judgements,
bul simply suggests that the course of nineteenth and twentieth century
Balkan history has been marked by a series of trend-breaking events, most,
though not all, the product of external forces, which have diverted history
from its anticipated courses, nullified expectations, and in the process,
undermined and redefined identities, including national identities. This
point is crucial to an understanding of the evolution of the national identity
of the Slavs of Macedonia.

II

The national revival of the Slavs of Macedonia began in the late Ottoman
Empire, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. This national
revival was roughly contemporaneous with those of the other Orthodox Christian
peoples of the Balkan peninsula, and was produced by more or less the same
causes: a growing sense that the Ottoman Empire was doomed, and that the
emancipation of its subject peoples was a realistic prospect; an increasing
commercial prosperity, which strengthened the urban, "middle-class", social
leadership of the Orthodox peoples; an expanding demand tor education,
and in particular, for popular education in the vernacular languages of
the Orthodox; and an increasing exposure to cultural and intellectual influences
from Western and Central Europe, and also from Russia.(6)
The national content of the Macedonian Slav revival was clearly and unequivocally
Bulgarian. This should occasion no surprise. The identification "Bulgarian"
was already current among the Macedonian Slavs; their dialects closely
resembled those of their eastern Slav neighbours, who then, as now, were
also known as Bulgarians; and the emerging modern Bulgarian literary language
was readily comprehensible in Macedonia. Indeed, nineteenth century Macedonia
served as one of the principal centres of the Bulgarian national revival:
its Slav inhabitants, led by their new nationally-minded intelligentsia,
participated fully in the Bulgarian literary and linguistic revivals, in
the movement lor schooling in Bulgarian, and also in the first major political
expression of the Bulgarian national movement, namely, the successful campaign
tor a national Orthodox church, established in 1870 as the Bulgarian Exarchate.(7)

The Bulgarian revival in Macedonia was not unopposed. For one thing,
the population of the region was ethnically and religiously mixed: Orthodox
Slavs were the largest ethnic group, but they did not constitute an absolute
majority of the population, which also included large numbers of Moslem
Turks, Albanians, Pomaks and Torbes, Orthodox Greeks, Vlachs and Serbs,
and a significant Jewish community. The Greeks and Serbs, too, had national
ambitions in the region, and believed that these could be furthered by
a policy of cultural and linguistic assimilation of the Macedonian Slavs,
to be achieved through educational and church propaganda. Nonetheless,
by the 1870s the Bulgarians were clearly the dominant national party in
Macedonia; it was widely anticipated that the Macedonian Slavs would continue
to evolve as an integral part of the modern Bulgarian nation, and that,
in the event of the Ottoman Empire's demise, Macedonia would be included
in a Bulgarian successor-state. That these anticipations proved false was
due not to any intrinsic peculiarities of the Macedonian Slavs, setting
them apart from the Bulgarians, but to a series of catastrophic events,
which, over a period of seventy years, diverted the course of Macedonian
history away from its presumed trend.

The first of these catastrophic events was the Russo-Ottoman war of
1877. This led to the establishment, in 1878, of a de facto independent
Bulgarian state in Moesia and parts of Thrace; Macedonia, however, remained
under direct Ottoman rule. This political separation weakened the Bulgarian
cause in Macedonia in a number of ways. In the first place, the Bulgarians
lost the confidence of the Ottoman authorities, who took steps to constrain
Bulgarian national activity in Macedonia. In the second, the Serbs and
the Greeks seized the opportunity to intensify their own assimilatory national
propagandas in the region. Finally, a significant proportion of the Slav
intelligentsia of Macedonia, the leaders of the Bulgarian revival, emigrated
to the new Bulgarian state in search of jobs and careers. However, the
fact that the political separation of Macedonia from Bulgaria in 1878 has
proved permanent should not lead us to exaggerate its significance at the
time; lo contemporaries, the setback to the Bulgarian cause seemed temporary.
By the 1890s Ottoman hostility was abating, and the authorities were tolerating
a renewal of Bulgarian ecclesiastical and educational activities in Macedonia;
Greek and Serb propaganda made but little headway among the Slavs; and
a new generation of Bulgarian intelligentsia was emerging in Macedonia.(8)

It was, however, members of this new generation who were responsible
lor provoking the second catastrophe to face the Slavs of Macedonia. They
did so by launching an attempt to overthrow Ottoman rule in Macedonia by
force, the vehicle for this attempt being a body conventionally known as
the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO). Formally, IMRO
did not seek Macedonia's annexation to Bulgaria, but only Macedonia's autonomy
- a point which has encouraged misleading suggestions that IMRO viewed
the Slavs of Macedonia as an independent "Macedonian" nation, ethnically
separate from the Bulgarians. In reality, IMRO never questioned the Bulgarian
national identity of the Macedonian Slavs; its apparent preference for
autonomy over annexation was essentially a matter of political tactics,
and at most, implied a recognition that the presence ol numerous non-Bulgarians
in Macedonia might render outright annexation to Bulgaria impractical.
From the late 1890s onwards, IMRO embarked upon a campaign of revolutionary
agitation and terrorism in Macedonia, culminating, in 1903, in an unsuccessful
attempt at a mass uprising. The consequences lor the Slav population of
Macedonia were grave. Faced with repression on the part of the Ottoman
authorities, and also with armed attacks, tolerated by the Ottoman authorities,
by local Greeks and Serbs, many fled to Bulgaria, or renounced their Bulgarian
identity and declared themselves to be Greeks or Serbs. Others look advantage
of new opportunities for emigration to the United Stales of America. For
the first time, or so it appeared, the Bulgarian national movement in Macedonia
might he in danger of losing its principal asset: namely, the Bulgarians'
status as (the largest ethnic group in Macedonia. As to IMRO, in the face
of failure it rapidly lost its organisational coherence, and broke up into
mutually hostile factions. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 afforded some
respite, offering the Slavs of Macedonia some opportunities for legal political
activity and representation in the Ottoman parliament; but they were by
now too weakened to derive much advantage from these concessions.(9)

Neither the first nor the second of these catastrophes had significantly
affected the Macedonian Slavs' sense of their national identity, which
remained predominantly Bulgarian. Not so the third catastrophe: the Balkan
Wars of 1912-1913. These put an end to Ottoman rule, but left the bulk
of Macedonia, and its Slav population, partitioned between Serbia and Greece.
Only a small portion of the territory and population went to Bulgaria.
This territorial verdict was confirmed at the end of the First World War,
exposing the national identity of a majority of the Macedonian Slavs to
sustained assaults. Within Greece, and also within the new kingdom of Yugoslavia,
which Serbia had joined in 1918, the ejection of the Bulgarian church,
the closure of Bulgarian schools, and the banning of publication in Bulgarian,
together with the expulsion or flight to Bulgaria of a large proportion
of the Macedonian Slav intelligentsia, served as the prelude to campaigns
of forcible cultural and linguistic assimilation. Within Greece, the Macedonian
Slavs were designated "Slavophone Greeks", while within Yugoslavia, they
were officially treated as "South Serbs". In both countries, schools and
the media were used to disseminate the national ideologies and identities,
and also the languages, of the new ruling nations, the Greeks and the Serbs.
These cultural measures were reinforced by steps to alter the composition
of the population: Serb colonists were implanted in Yugoslav Macedonia,
while in Greek Macedonia, the mass settlement of Greek refugees from Anatolia
definitively reduced the Slav population to minority status. In both countries,
these policies of de-bulgarisation and assimilation were pursued, with
fluctuating degrees of vigour, right through to 1941, when the Second World
War engulfed the Balkan peninsula. The degree of these policies' success,
however, remains open to question. The available evidence suggests that
Bulgarian national sentiment among the Macedonian Slavs of Yugoslavia and
Greece remained strong throughout the inter-war period, though they lacked
the means to offer more than passive resistance to official policies.(10)

It was the fourth catastrophe, the Second World War, which was to have
decisive consequences for the Macedonian Slavs' sense of national identity.
The German invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941, and the Soviet invasion
of Bulgaria in 1944, destroyed the established political regimes in each
of these countries, paving the way for successful communist seizures of
power in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (and also in Albania), and for a protracted
civil war in Greece, which ended, however, in the defeat of the communist-led
side. Prior to the Second World War, the various Balkan communist parties
had enjoyed limited popular support and influence, and their views on the
Macedonian issue had been of little practical importance. During the 1920s,
the Comintern had advocated a "united and independent Macedonia." This
line was enthusiastically supported by the Bulgarian communist party, which
continued to stress the Bulgarian national identity of the Macedonian Slavs,
but it was regarded with embarrasment by the Yugoslav and Greek communist
parties, who were fearful of offending nationalist sentiment within their
own countries. Between 1933 and 1935, however, the Comintern shifted its
line, and gave its support to an original thesis, developed by the Yugoslav
party, which held that the Macedonian Slavs were neither Serbs nor Bulgarians,
but constituted a separate Macedonian nation. Whatever the reasons for
the Comintern's change ofattitude,which appear to have derived from its
concurrent pursuit of a "united front" of progressive forces against fascism,
the new thesis on Macedonian nationality was scarcely welcomed to the Bulgarian
party, and nor docs it appear to have aroused much of an echo within Macedonia,
even among communists.(11)

Nonetheless, having emerged, during the course of the Second World War,
as the most powerful communist party in the Balkans, the Yugoslav party
was able to impose its notion of a separate Macedonian nation on the Bulgarian
and Greek communist parties, evidently with Moscow's blessing, and to draw
up ambitious plans for the unification of the whole of Macedonia, including
those parts held by Greece and Bulgaria, within an expanded Yugoslavia
or a Yugoslav-led Balkan federation. The Tito-Stalin split in 1948, and
the defeat of the communists in the Greek civil war a year later, prevented
the realisation of these territorial ambitions, and also led the Bulgarian
communist party to distance itself from its earlier endorsement of the
Yugoslav notion of a separate Macedonian notion.12 Within Tito's Yugoslavia,
however, the notion of a separate Macedonian nation and national identity
continued to be emphasized. The Macedonians were given their own republic
within a federal Yugoslavia, and great efforts were made to promote an
independent Macedonian culture. Crucial to these efforts was the creation
of a new Macedonian literary language, taught in all schools and propagated
through the mass media/The new national language could scarcely fail to
bear a close resemblance to Bulgarian, but its separateness was emphasized
by a new orthography, by the cultivation of local dialect forms, and by
the importation of Serbian vocabulary. The language was followed by a national
literature, an officially-approved national history, and eventually - in
a communist state - a national Macedonian Orthodox church. By implication,
at least, such a programme amounted to a new form of de-Bulgarisation.
As officially promoted, the new Macedonian nationalism contained clear
anti-Bulgarian elements: historic links with Bulgaria were denied or played
down, while those with the other nations of Yugoslavia, including the Serbs,
were played up.(13)

There can be no doubt that the Yugoslav communists' promotion of a separate
Macedonian national identity has been a considerable success. The recent
disintegration of the communist regime, and the Macedonian republic's secession
from Yugoslavia, have been accompanied by no domestic questioning of the
Macedonian national identity, and by no significant resurgence of Bulgarian
national sentiment among Macedonians. The success of this communist exercise
in 'nation-building' is difficult to explain with precision, given the
inaccessibility of much of the historical evidence. However, the following
general points may be made. First, the promotion of a separate national
identity began in the 1940s, a full generation after the likeliest source
of opposition to it, the Bulgarian-minded intelligentsia, had been in good
part driven out of Macedonia; not surprisingly, active rejection of the
new identity appears to have been rare. Second, the decision to create
a Macedonian literary language for everyday use was genuinely popular,
as was the initial talk of establishing a united Macedonia. Third, the
period of communist rule after the Second World War brought about major
social changes, including mass literacy and unprecedented urbanisation,
which greatly facilitated the dissemination of the new Macedonian identity.
So did an unprecedented expansion of the mass media. Fourthly, an examination
of the age-structure of the population of Yugoslav Macedonia shows that
a large majority were born after 1944, and have, in consequence, been exposed
exclusively to the Macedonian national idea.(14)

It remains to consider the fifth and most recent catastrophe to face
the Slavs of Macedonia: namely, the collapse of communism, and of the second,
communist Yugoslavia. This has led, for the first time in modern history,
to the creation of an independent Macedonian state: the republic of Macedonia
officially seceded from Yugoslavia in December 1991. As noted earlier,
secession from Yugoslavia has led to no questioning of the Macedonian national
identity, which continues to be expressed and defended, within the new
Macedonian state, in the same historical, linguistic, and cultural terms
as were formerly employed in communist Yugoslavia. If anything, this sense
of national identity has been reinforced by the recent behaviour of some
of Macedonia's neighbours. Greece has refused to recognise the new state,
insisting that the name 'Macedonia' is the sole property of the Hellenic
nation, and that its appropriation by 'Skopje' threatens Greece's own territorial
integrity. Post-communist Bulgaria, for its part, has recognised the Macedonian
state, but pointedly added that it does not recognise the Macedonian nationality.
Within the Serb-dominated remnant of Yugoslavia, too, ultra-nationalists
have revived the pre-Second World War claim that Macedonia is in reality
'South Serbia'.(15)

Yet if, in the short run, Macedonian nationality has been strengthened,
it would be dangerous to make predictions as to the longer term. For one
thing, the political situation in the Balkan peninsula remains highly volatile,
and the survival of the independent Macedonian state is not finally assured.
As the foregoing account has suggested, political upheavals have played
a decisive part in shaping the Macedonian Slavs' sense of nationality:
fresh upheavals may engender Further reshaping. For another, the Macedonian
nation remains small and relatively new; and as such, potentially vulnerable
to cultural assimilation. In this respect, there is an intriguing question-mark
over the Macedonians' future relationship with the Bulgarians. On the one
hand, there is room for conflicts which would strengthen the Macedonians'
sense of separateness. For some, if not all, Bulgarians, the Macedonians
remain 'unredeemed' Bulgarian brothers, whose Macedonian 'nationality'
is a fraud perpetrated by the Yugoslav communists. To further complicate
matters, there have recently been signs that the idea of Macedonian nationality
may have taken root in Bulgaria itself, among some inhabitants of that
portion of Macedonia which has been Bulgarian since the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913, and also among some descendants of the Macedonian emigre community
in Bulgaria. Yet on the other hand, the possibility of rapprochement should
not be overlooked. Freed from the ideological control exercised by the
Yugoslav communists, the Macedonians may, over time, come to take a more
positive view of their historic links with the Bulgarians, and may also,
over time, prove, susceptible to the influence of the more deeply-rooted
and developed Bulgarian national culture. Anything resembling a comprehensive
re-Bulgarisation of the Macedonians seems out of the question: the two
peoples have lived apart for too long. But it is not inconceivable that
there might develop a revived sense of kinship and solidarity, which might
in turn have important consequences for international ralations in Balkan
peninsula. All this, however, is speculation.